In the processing of animals destined for human consumption and particularly animal producers usually need to transport their animals to a containment building where an auctioneer sells the animals to brokers and/or meat processors who then transport the animals to abattoirs. Thus, the animal producer and the brokers and/or processors need to load the animals in trucks and sometime transport then long distances. During transportation the animal is in a confined area and not fed nor provided water. The animals being in closed quarters often are in contact with one another and this bruises the skin of the animal often leaving blue marks on the carcass after the animal has been processed in a slaughter house. Also when the animals are delivered to the slaughter house they arrive stressed and are further subjected to a stressful environment and this has been known to affect the quality of the meat.
Another problem nowadays is that there are very large animal suppliers who have their own slaughter houses and who sell meat in very large quantities to meat distributors and large retailers. This makes it very difficult for the small animal producer to compete on the marketplace as there are too many intermediates between the small animal producer and the retailer and the result of this is that the small producers are not profitable operations and are often discouraged from continuing such business. Their products are often destined for small local retailers.
Another problem that exists with small suppliers is that when their cattle or animals are sent to auction they are usually placed in groups of animals with other producers and the carcass of his animals cannot be inspected by him nor is that carcass identified by the retailer to give credit to the supplier for the quality of his product. The traceability of the cut meat products derived from his carcasses do not identify the animal supplier but often the broker. The identity of the producer is not known to the retailer.
Reference is also made to U.S. Pat. No. 5,538,466 and Swedish Patent No. 448,144 which describe the construction of a mobile abattoir. However, those mobile abattoirs are slaughter houses and they are brought to an area where they are installed in a permanent manner and refrigerated trucks are used to transport processed carcasses directly from the mobile abattoir.